


The Whole Thing's Topped with a Bow

by bopeep



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas Presents, Fluffy Ending, Light Bondage, M/M, Oral Sex, Teasing, Vague hand-wavey frottage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 22:46:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13153614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bopeep/pseuds/bopeep
Summary: After a close call on the job, Steve asks Bucky to help him unwind with an apology gift for two: red satin ribbons and thirty minutes to make the best of them. It's the season of giving, after all.





	The Whole Thing's Topped with a Bow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FrostyEmma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostyEmma/gifts).



Twas the day before Christmas, and all through New York, alien invaders had not shown any religious inclination whatsoever and therefore wrecked about as much havoc as any other business day of the year. The Avengers took it in merry stride, though the challenge proved to be a lot more effort than truly any of them had expected, least of all Steve Rogers; Bucky Barnes only barely yanked him from the brink of death faster than you can name all eight reindeer. At the Tower before debriefing, not a creature was stirring, except those that never really had any chill to begin with and weren’t going to start this winter.  
  
“You busy? I thought we could exchange gifts,” Steve asked with a guarded playfulness, knocking on Bucky’s open doorframe. He could feel the tension of the space and let it keep him there, uninvited, as he waited for Bucky’s response. His reading light was dim and warm, casting sweet shadows on the floor.  
  
“My gift to you, this year as ever, was saving your ass from another stupid mistake that could have taken you from me, you selfish asshole,” Bucky said without looking up from his book, reading in bed in pajama pants only, chest still salted with sweat from the harrowing afternoon. Steve winced, nodding. The day was still fresh in his mind; it was as close a call as any he’d experienced, and rattled him a little. He needed Bucky to ground him, as he always did, to hold him or punish him or both but in the end remind him he was still there and still whole, but Bucky hadn’t spoken to him since the quinjet home. In truth, he didn’t expect this proposition to go well, but he needed to try. Bucky turned a page with a crisp, dramatic huff. “You can stuff your sorrys in a sack for Santa, ya fucker. You think it’s fun watching you flirt with death?”  
  
“I would never go all the way. He means nothing to me,” Steve said, folding his arms and leaning in the doorway.  
  
“You know what I mean,” Bucky said, looking up at him with a hurt in his eyes he’d been keeping pretty well-hidden underneath years of practiced exasperation. Steve worried his lip.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, “I do. I thought we should blow off some steam and I could apologize for at least the last five or six times I did something stupid.” Steve held a spool of wide, red satin ribbon in his hands, the kind for fancy wrapping and lingerie boxes. “Hm?” He pulled the end and unwound a yard between his hands, taut and smooth in the dim light. Bucky glanced between Steve’s asking eyes and the ribbon. “D'you know what _I_ mean?”  
  
“Can’t say that I do, Rogers,” Bucky said, dog-earring his page. Steve sighed heavily.  
  
“I can’t function when you’re mad at me. Please, just--- forgive me a second and do this for me,” Steve said bluntly, an immature urgency there that echoed 90 years. Bucky sighed.  
  
“No, Steve, mad would be a child describing it. Mad is the tip of the iceberg.”  
  
“Livid?” Steve offered, his voice small in the back of his throat. Bucky stared at him.  
  
“If I had known the number of times each week I would have to re-panic about losing you, I would have stayed in the tube like a happy oblivious popsicle. And furthermore,” Bucky took a deep breath and slammed his book shut with what could have been a laugh if he wasn’t trying so hard to stifle it, “if you’re about to wrap your dick up like a Christmas tree I’m gonna return it to Gimbels.”  
  
“Gimbels closed in the 80’s," Steve sassed back.  
  
“ _Then_   _I will personally yank that dick back in time_ ,” he hissed.  
  
“You promise?” Steve said through half of his mouth, sure the whole of it would get smacked right off if he pushed it just a little further. Bucky caught that gleam in his eye and the veneer melted a little; he knew what this was.  
  
“You goddamn punk,” he sighed. “What am I gonna do with you?” Steve tossed him the spool of ribbon.  
  
“Whatever you want. We’re wound tight enough to snap so I’m here. Let’s go.” Bucky barked a laugh at his impatience; he was shaking with it. Steve took that laugh as a cue to continue. “Oh, thank God. I knew you’d warm up to it,” he said with a sigh of relief, toeing off his shoes. He was scrambling at his belt and Bucky frowned.  
  
“Eager beaver, huh?”  
  
“I’m wearing a lot more layers than you, I gotta catch up,” Steve said, henley over his head and on the floor as he kicked the door shut behind him.  
  
“Well, don’t mind me. I’ll just watch this show on fast-forward,” Bucky said, folding his arms. Steve stopped and laughed, raking a hand over his face.  
  
“Okay, full disclosure. We have thirty-five minutes before the debriefing,” he said. “I don’t want to rush you but we’re talking sprint rather than marathon. I don’t want to lose any more time.” He locked eyes with half a smile. “I didn’t say it was a perfect gift.” The light caught him, softening the lines. Bucky set the spool of ribbon the side table and got up, reaching out to thread Steve’s belt out of the loops, carefully and quiet.  
  
“You didn’t need to,” he said, letting it fall and tracking up to look him in the eyes. He slid his hands behind Steve’s ears to hold him there, cradling into his touch. “Anything I want?” He repeated. Steve nodded.  
  
“I just want you. But,” he held up a hand quickly, ”don’t make me regret this. It’s Christmas, you know.”  
  
“By God, I think you’re right,” Bucky grinned, and, thought he wanted it that way, Steve knew that asking nicely wouldn’t have cut it in a million years.

* * *

In fact, he could confirm that, as he lay naked but for his briefs and snowman socks, red ribbon loose over his eyes and tying his hands together over his head. Bucky surveyed his work, quick and sloppy but serviceable.  
  
“On your command,” Steve said with a nervous chuckle, using a fist to push the ribbon slightly out of his eyes to catch a look at Bucky, who was unwinding a new length of ribbon, yards long. He caught him looking and frowned.

“Doesn’t Santa say no peeking? You’re really going to push the boundaries on a sprint if you break enough rules, ya lousy present.” Bucky set to work tying the ribbon around him in stripes, slowly, smoothing each length across Steve’s body, goosebumps following every touch.  
  
“God, I don’t know how you still do that to me after all this time,” he sighed. Bucky kissed the hollow at his throat. “Guess you’ll have to shake me to find out what’s inside,” Steve said.  
  
“Never supposed to shake babies,” Bucky purred, and he danced the tips of two metallic fingers just feathers and hints along the curve of Steve’s chest, ghosting down the sides to stop short at his hips. Steve shivered and Bucky could swear he saw individual hairs rise to attention. “Ain’t that right, baby?”  
  
“Would you just put me out of my misery? I said sprint,” Steve laughed, shaky. “This is going to be really cutting it close.”  
  
“And you really are a baby,” Bucky chuckled, adjusting to lie along Steve’s side, careful not to contact the skin. He whispered against Steve’s ear, his nose nudging against the excess silk ribbon. He was half-hard in his sweats and didn’t waste the opportunity to let Steve know. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s a gift for everyone. And I can make thirty minutes feel like four hours, just fucking wait for it.”  
  
“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve breathed through a smile. “This is disorienting.”  
  
“Let your imagination run wild. I could be anyone you want,” Bucky said, running his hand over the goddamn topography between Steve’s pecks and hips. “Who are you picturing?”  
  
“Your mother.”  
  
“Watch your mouth, Rogers.” Bucky pulled back and flicked his ear.  
  
“Sorry. I’m not in any position to make jokes, hm?” He asked, hitting ‘ _position_ ’ with a lilt that made Bucky’s head spin. He shook his head and groaned.  
  
“Tied to the bed and this kid thinks we’re here for laughs, ladies and gentlemen. Go ahead and make jokes, I’ll just wait til you’ve finished.” Steve clenched his fists against the ribbon, aggravated at how soft and yielding it was. He almost wanted it to be rougher, something with purchase. It was mercilessly soft.  
  
“I’m done. Honest.”  
  
“You’re not even close, I promise you.” He swung one leg over Steve at the hips and lowered his shoulders to crush a kiss between them, satisfied to find Steve so needy in response, mouth exploring with a vigor that compensated for hands and eyes that could not. When he got tired of holding himself too carefully up, after two breaks for breath and one very purple suction mark on Steve’s collarbone, Bucky let his hips drop with an agonizing grind. The weight of him was delicious against Steve’s tightening briefs, and he wasn’t quiet about it.  
  
“If you were gonna rub me out in my shorts I would have worn a prettier pair,” Steve said with more than a hint, inhaling sharply as Bucky’s hands found his way downward.  
  
“You’re pretty enough without,” he said. “Next time. We’re on a sprint here, remember?” Bucky said with more than a little sarcasm in his tone, and he worked Steve out of his underwear, freeing his cock awkwardly into the nest of ribbon looped there. Bucky admired it for a moment with a hum of approval, letting the pearl of precum take its cue as he delicately stroked twice down the length. “How did Santa know?” He played, “just the right size, my my.” Before Steve could blush any harder at his sudden exposure he felt the slick of ribbon tightening around his now vulnerable, very attentive cock, loosening to slide down, tight again at the base, repeating, before it disappeared altogether, leaving Steve to whine, a high-pitched pathetic sound that woke up the parts of Bucky that hadn’t yet roused. He was reluctant to let Steve have the sensation back, but he wanted more than anything to get a big fucking bow on that pretty thing.  
  
“Maybe this is a waste of ribbon,” Steve huffed, squirming. Bucky clicked his tongue, looping two rabbit ears together.  
  
“But it’ll look so nice when you stripe it like a candy cane,” Bucky said, gently kissing Steve on the impatient twitching dick now darling in its Christmas bow. The heat of his mouth from nowhere took Steve by such surprise that he bucked forward like a wind-up toy and Bucky caught him by the hipbones to ease him back to the bed. “Easy, sweetheart. You’ll ruin the giftwrap before we even start counting down.” Steve choked a little.  
  
“Counting down?”  
  
“I was thinking 12 days of Christmas,” Bucky grinned, his fingers idly toying at the lines of red across Steve's chest, playing between them like a piano. “ _On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me---_ ”  
  
“That’s the worst one, Buck, that is objectively the worst Christmas song.”

“You’re just nervous,” Bucky said, his thumbs working the tension from Steve’s abdominals in lazy circles. “Twelve sounds like a long time to wait, doesn’t it?” He leaned down to flick his tongue across Steve’s nipples, neglected, he thought, and sweetly demanding attention between two lines of satin. He focused on one, and then the other, and could hear Steve licking his own lips in response.  
  
“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve breathed. “Buck. Yes, it does. We don’t have that kind of time.” Bucky grunted between laps.  
  
“Who says?”  
  
“Tony!”  
  
“Sorry Tony,” Bucky shrugged, popping an overworked bud out of his mouth with a horrifying smack. “Captain America can’t come to the phone right now, he’s a little tied up at the moment.”  
  
“ _Buck_ ,” Steve groaned. Bucky laughed and kissed him quiet. “God, I just have to sit here and listen to you yap and I can’t even distract myself with your body. This counts as your Valentine, too.”  
  
“Parts of you do not seem to be hating it,” Bucky pointed out, “sweet boy. But if you’re feeling impatient,” he said, running a hand up behind Steve to get a handful of his ass and glancing at the clock, horny but realistic, “we can hit the highlights reel.”  
  
And suddenly, his hands were gone.  
  
Steve craned to decipher those telltale audio hints: the shift of the bed taking weight as Bucky inelegantly squirted that coconut stuff into his hands, his heart throbbing in his ears. And all at once it could have been one hand or twelve taking his length in stride, a wave of superficial relief and building tension following.  
  
“I’m dreaming of a _white_  Christmas,” Bucky crooned, languid strokes matching his tone. Steve groaned from a place somewhere in the back of his skull, one of relief and of supreme exasperation.  
  
“ _Ahh, Bu_ \--- Fuck you,” Steve whined. “Too far, too weird. Don't--- stop though.” Bucky's blood continued to pool low and heavy, waves when Steve said his name like a curse and a blessing.  
  
“Tired of the Christmas theme you started? Worried what will happen when I get to your roasting chestnuts? O Come, all ye faithful?” He swiped his thumb over the leaking tip with punctuation and Steve twisted in the pillows.  
  
“ _Jesus_ Fucking---”  
  
“That’s faithful enough for me,” Bucky grinned and took Steve in his mouth, the sort of eager dive that Steve would have smacked him on the back of the head for before threading his fingers through that long hair (he would, anyway, if he could.) His wrists seized at their bonds above his head but he knew better than to bring them down.  
  
“ _God_ , Buck. Jesus, Mary--- Christ, I can’t even imagine---”  
  
“I bet you can,” Bucky said, his hands carefully twisting where his lips left off. “I bet you can see it. My lips, my tongue, your beautiful aching cock---” he licked a sloppy ring and Steve’s hips rose to meet him again, predictable in their want. His cheeks and chest were blushing splotches in a way that always set Bucky off, a kind of visual validation that the most beautiful boy in the room wanted him, wanted him in ways that went all the way back to Brooklyn and set that scientifically perfect blood on fire. He backed off a bit to take it in, his hands wandering to his waistband.  
  
“Filthy mouth,” Steve said, his confidence strangled. For a moment there was no movement, no purchase. He craned to listen, and it was only fabric in response, coupled with his own breathing and the furious lack of sensations below the waist as he waited. He bucked at the air. “Where are you? God, I want to see what you’re doing.”  
  
“I’m here, babe. Looking at you, and I can’t help myself,” Bucky said with a groan, and his narration coupled with the unmistakable wet rhythm of his own jerking off weighed painfully in Steve’s chest and set a twitch to his cock, resting with painful little friction against the lowest ribbon on Steve’s hips. “Such a beautiful boy.” He sucked a kiss to the creases at his hips.  
  
“Buck---”  
  
“I know sweetheart. I want to make you feel good. You know that’s all I want,” he said, low and solid, and Steve could feel him on the bed again. The ribbons began to unwind from his cock, inching him closer and closer as the tiny sensations built. “You’re here. You’re safe. I’ve got you. You can unwind.” Bucky unwrapped him carefully, shaking his head at the visual now and happy Steve couldn’t see him holding back a laugh; the ribbon was disgusting now. He glanced at the clock; impeccable timing. Steve’s breath hitched as the final ring of ribbon disappeared, and Bucky just about proposed, looking up at him.  
  
“Love you in red, Cap,” he said before he eased Steve back into his mouth, relaxing into a pace not frenzied but adoring. He ground himself uselessly against the edge of the bed, unable to help himself just now as Steve’s breathing became erratic, thrusting against Bucky in spite of himself, twisting in the pools of ribbon around them on the sheets. Behind the red satin he saw stars when with a sudden chorus of bells everything seized and let go in shockwaves, pulsing after the snap and crying Bucky’s name like a prayer. He came down and desperately searched for Bucky’s arms, whining incoherently. Bucky caught his own breath and curled himself tightly around him, a man built like a refrigerator reduced to a simpering fawn.  
  
“I’d never let anything happen to you,” he promised, his jaw lax and breathing catching up to his calm. “The last thing I do on this earth will be for you. That’s my promise. You’re a gift I don’t deserve,” he said, kissing Steve’s wrists as he untied boyscout knots. “Jokes aside.” He slid the blindfold from Steve’s eyes and softly kissed his forehead. “You were so good,” he assured him, arranging his arms to bring him closer, closer still.  
  
“Thank you for this," Steve said, honest in a moment of bliss. "This mean you won’t take my dick back to Gimbels?” He managed as the haze cleared from his vision, pressed fully into Bucky’s chest, looking up at him as he adjusted to the light. Bucky brushed his hair from his eyes, soaking him in like the warmth of the sun. He would never get enough; this was the only gift worth having.  
  
“They’d never take it back now, I ruined the packaging.”  
  
“Guess you gotta keep me,” Steve sighed happily, burying his face in Bucky’s chest to kiss lazily at the scars where his armature met the shoulder. Bucky nodded.  
  
“Guess I do,” he said, and though the rest of the team tried not to imagine why, Steve was trailing a piece of soggy ribbon from his pajama bottoms into the conference room that night, and Bucky spent the whole of the debriefing writing raunchy if sincere illustrated thank-you notes: to Santa Claus, to Baby Jesus, and to Joann Fabrics stores nationwide for their great contributions to the gift-wrappers of the world.  
  
He would be sure to include this on his Christmas list in years to come. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a stucky secret santa gift for frostyemma! I'm sorry I just couldn't help myself with the horrible holiday content; please forgive this, my very first (AND LASt) attempt at writing stucky smut, and have the loveliest holiday season! Ho ho ho! I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had anxiety writing it ;) Merry Chris-Smut to All and to all a Good! Night!


End file.
